


bring it back home to me

by Rivran



Series: hear that bell ringing (but won't get the door) [5]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Crowley Being an Idiot (Good Omens), Deus Ex Machina, Established Relationship, Humor, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Social Media, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), i think, seriously i know nothing about anything and it shows, they finally get their cottage, this one's not really pov outsider like the last ones but it does wrap up the plot threads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29194533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivran/pseuds/Rivran
Summary: Crowley and Aziraphale end their Alpha Centauri holiday, but the return doesn’t go as smoothly as they’d like.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: hear that bell ringing (but won't get the door) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2017918
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31





	bring it back home to me

_Tick._

_Tock._

_Tick._

_Tock._

_Tick._

Aziraphale shot a disapproving glance at the clock before it could _tock_ again. It still displayed the time, though, and that was disconcerting in its own right.

Crowley was late — nearly two hours late. Before Armageddon failed to happen, he wouldn’t have thought much of it. But now, after they had narrowly escaped both Death and their former colleagues? This was not the sort of lateness where Aziraphale could simply assume Crowley had forgot the time; it was the worrying kind of late that made his hand grasp for a flaming sword that wasn’t there.

Instead, he reached for his telephone.

It rang. And rang.

He heard the phone click as it answered.

“—my own bloody phone, I can answer it myself, _give me that!_ Hi, angel, sorry.”

“Crowley! Where the Hell have you been? You were supposed to meet me at ten! Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Yeah, erm, sorry about that. I ran into a bit of trouble this morning.”

“Trouble? You didn’t see any—”

“No, none of our former coworkers or any of those wankers. It’s just that — _I can see you whispering, mind your own damned business_ — I got caught up in some things.”

“Things,” he repeated. “That’s quite specific.”

“Yeah, I’m getting there, I promise. Anyway, Jordan called me earlier asking if I was back in the area yet. I told them we got back yesterday, and I was celebrating by having myself a good bask in the sun, right? But they didn’t believe me, so I told them I’d send a picture. I leaned back to get the road in frame and lost my balance a bit. That’s all, I swear.”

“Crowley.”

“Okay, I might have been on the roof of my building at the time.”

“Crowley!”

“It’s fine! It’s only a five-storey building.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale repeated for the third time. “You fell off a building.”

“Only a little bit!”

“Well.” He paused. “Where are you now?”

“Ugh, I’ve been stuck here for hours, angel, you wouldn’t believe it. They’re convinced I’m going to drop dead any minute and I can’t convince them otherwise!”

“Couldn’t you miracle their memories?”

Crowley considered this. “I hadn’t actually thought of that,” he admitted. “But you’ve got to admit it wouldn’t be very — er, very like me to do that.”

“You can say _nice_ , dear, no one’s keeping track anymore. All right, I’m going to come pick you up. You are not going to argue,” he said, before Crowley could start arguing.

“Yes, dear,” he said, with complete sincerity.

“I love you,” Aziraphale reminded.

“I still can’t believe you do.”

“Yes, well, neither can I sometimes. Now be nice to the doctor until I get there,” he reminded before he hung up.

_Meanwhile, a few hours ago_

It was sunny, the Earth still existed, and Crowley was celebrating by enjoying everything it had to offer. He had arranged a thick, dark blanket into a nest between two pipes on the roof. It was the perfect spot for a snake to soak up the sun during a nap.

That is, unless his phone rang.

He glared at the phone until it answered itself on speaker. “Thisss better be good. You’re interrupting a perfectly good nap,” he said in lieu of a polite greeting.

“Well, good morning to you too, you grumpy old bitch. Are you a snake right now?”

“How elssse would I be napping?”

“I dunno, like a normal fucking person?”

“I’m not a perssson,” he reminded them.

“Fair enough,” they conceded. “Are you at least on Earth yet? I have fresh drama for you.”

“You humans have such short attention spans,” he complained. “It was only a couple months! We just got back yesterday, though, and I’m enjoying having one sssun again.”

“And you call me the weird one,” they muttered. “I don’t really believe you, but whatever. Just call me back when you have time, okay?”

“I’ll send you a picture once I’m back to having handsss,” he said.

“Knock yourself out. Just call me when you get a decent chance. Seriously, the conspiracies have started to get _weird_. People have started privately messaging me to ask about it, and I haven’t said a single thing where the public can see it. This whole situation is fuckin’ insane, and it’s your fault, so the least you can do is hear me out.”

“Soundsss captivating,” he drawled, which was difficult to do as a snake. “Well, look at the time. I should be off to the shop in a few minutes. You can get the conspiracy theorists sorted in a bit. Deal?”

“Sure.”

“Okay.” He hung up without saying goodbye. It was just demonic enough to satisfy the little voice in the back of his head.

He slithered up into a standing position and cracked the newly-formed joints. The phone was already in his hand, mostly because he had expected it to be. And even if the human kid didn’t care, it would still be a shame to waste the perfectly good sun without a selfie, right?

The terrace wall would make a good photo spot, he decided. He seated himself comfortably on the ledge and held the phone up. The sun washed out the lens. He leaned back a bit to get the light better.

“And that’s where my memory gets a bit fuzzy,” he had explained to the people in the ambulance. His glasses were missing and the light bordered on painfully bright. _So much for fixing the glare_ , he thought. “Where’s my phone?” he thought aloud.

Crowley couldn’t see it, but the paramedics exchanged uneasy glances. “It’s nothing to worry about, sir,” one said.

“No, I was supposed to go see my partner in a few minutes. He’ll be worrying himself sick if I’m late, and I always feel weird promising him I’m not dead,” he rambled. “Does anyone have the time?”

“It’s about 10:45,” supplied one of the figures around him.

“Oh. _Shit_ ,” he realized. “I was going to leave at ten.” He moved to sit up. The white walls swayed and shifted around him.

Somebody’s phone started ringing. He closed his eyes, as if it could block out the noise, but it stubbornly kept on ringing.

“Do we answer it?” muttered one of the figures around him.

“I don’t know,” another answered.

Crowley cracked one eye open. “Hey, that’s my phone,” he said, pushing himself up to seated. “What are you doing?”

“You should be lying down,” somebody said.

He reached out, swiping blindly for the phone. “Come on, it’s my own bloody phone, I can answer it myself, _give me that!_ Hi, angel, sorry…”

Aziraphale pinched the bridge of his nose. Now that they were safely back to the shop, he had time to absorb the entire story. Crowley lay stretched out on the sofa, wrapped in blankets like a sausage in a casing.

“You are,” he said, slowly, “the stupidest being on Earth sometimes.”

“Uh-huh,” Crowley agreed.

“You fell off a five-storey building because you weren’t paying attention.”

“Yes,” he nodded.

“And you let an ambulance full of people see your eyes, and then they watched you miraculously heal yourself.”

“I did do that, yes.” He frowned. “I thought you liked my eyes.”

Aziraphale’s face softened. “I do,” he said. “I wish you wouldn’t hide them when it’s just us. But you know how humans are.”

“Yeah, I know.” He sank a little further into his blanket cocoon.

His phone rang for the third time that day.

“Oh, that’ll be the kid. Internet drama, you know how it is,” he said, reaching out to take the phone.

Aziraphale held it away and answered it himself.

“You absolute FUCKING **IDIOT** ,” shouted the phone. “Do you have any fucking idea what you did? No, of course not, I’ll tell you. I got a phone call from one of my EMT friends, and guess what they just heard about? Some guy with YELLOW EYES and REAL WINGS that fell off a FUCKING BUILDING! And if that wasn’t rich enough,” they continued, still shrieking, “This guy woke up in an ambulance and magically healed himself before getting up and walking away! Does. That. Sound. Familiar?”

“Ah, hello, dear,” Aziraphale said, after bringing the phone back from arm’s length.

“Hi, Aziraphale. Your boyfriend is an idiot.”

“Yes, I’m afraid he is, sometimes.”

Crowley winced. “Is nobody on my side?”

Aziraphale glared at him.

“You know why I’m calling you an idiot, right?”

“Well, obviously it can’t be because of the roof thing,” he muttered.

“I don’t know what you just said, and I don’t care,” they said. “You looked pretty fucking demonic in public, my dude. All it took was one person to get one CCTV feed and now you’re all over Twitter, _again_. Am I the only one that remembers the girl that tried to kill you? There’s an even bigger group of Bible crazies just like her that think you’re Satan. And I wish I was joking.”

“Oh,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale opened his mouth, possibly to say an extremely unangelic word, when there was a knock at the door.

“I’ll take the phone,” Crowley said innocently.

Aziraphale opened the door just wide enough for his body to fill the gap and block the view inside. To his horror, there were three teenage girls outside. Holding _cameras_.

“Hello,” said the leader, slightly breathlessly. “Is this the shop with the demon in?”

“No,” Aziraphale said, then shut the door.

He walked back to the sitting room. Crowley had changed the phone call to video, somehow, and Jordan was saying something like “wow, you look like shit, I can’t believe they let you leave”.

“We’re moving,” announced Aziraphale.

“What,” said Crowley.

“There were people outside, with cameras, asking if this was the shop with the demon.”

“That’s not ideal,” Jordan commented from the phone.

“Oh, shut up,” Crowley said, ending the call with a click. “So. Amateur demon hunters? That’s not so bad, angel, you know we’ve dealt with worse.”

“They had holy water! They came prepared to kill you, Crowley! And we still don’t know why you didn’t disintegrate the last time that happened, which was in this shop, I might add.”

“How do we know it would kill me, though?”

“We don’t,” Aziraphale shot back. “And I refuse to allow you to test it. I’ve had quite enough of your near-death experiences, my dear.” 

“I know,” Crowley agreed, letting his head fall back into the cushion. He tilted his head to look at the angel. “So. Moving,” he said, because he really wasn’t in any shape for subtlety. “Where to? France? China?” He grinned. “America?”

Aziraphale pushed Crowley’s feet out of the way and sat on the end of the sofa. “Oh, nothing so far as that,” he said. “I think I should like to get a cottage by the sea. With quite a few bookshelves, of course, or perhaps a library with a hearth. A full garden for you, naturally. You could grow vegetables – I’ve always wanted a real kitchen. Oh, we could finally learn to cook.”

“Oh,” said Crowley weakly. “You’ve – you’ve thought about this before?”

“I’ve been thinking it for quite a while. Today’s events were simply a confirmation.” He looked suddenly worried. “Only if you’d like to go, of course – I suppose that was somewhat presumptuous of me. I wouldn’t want to ask anything of you that was –”

“Angel,” he interrupted, “I would love to live with you. Anywhere you want to go.”

Aziraphale smiled in the angelic way Crowley loved. “Oh, wonderful!”

“I draw the line at a fireplace, though.”

“We’ll freeze without a heat source, my dear.”

“For Somebody’s sake, angel, _really_. Central heating exists, you know –” 

And that was how it started. An angel and a demon, building a home together. It had never been done before. And yet, it felt natural – an obvious next step. They flicked through newspapers, browsed local listings, and, on one memorable occasion, toured an Ikea. 1

They found The One after two weeks of searching and more than a few glasses of wine.

“Oh, this one is lovely,” Aziraphale sighed.

“It’s got a decent kitchen,” Crowley noted.

“And that garden! It’s practically wild. Imagine what you could do with it.”

“Is that an electric heater in the library?”

“Look at those windows. Wouldn’t they be perfect sunning spots for you?”

They bought the house. They argued over furniture. They spent two hours painting, then redid the whole thing two more times with miracles before it stuck. They didn’t even bother doing it the human way when the furniture arrived.

When it was done, Crowley privately thought it was the most beautiful house he had ever seen. Not quite the most beautiful thing, of course, Aziraphale easily took that spot. But the house was _theirs;_ his and his in equal measure. They were free to live and love as they liked.

Free, of course, until they found the note from God on the coffee table.

> Hi, boys.
> 
> Love what you’ve done with the place! It fits you both.
> 
> Your combined presence brings balance to the humans. (I mean, you must know organized religion was never meant to get this bad.) Your love for humanity and for each other outweighs much of the evil in the world. I would show you the numbers, but they’re staggeringly large, even for Me, and you wouldn’t understand the units anyway. Love is a remarkable thing.
> 
> You may both rest easy with the knowledge I am about to give you: Heaven and Hell will not come for you. They cannot harm you. Your corporations are yours to keep, provided you don’t completely destroy them. Lucky for you, you are both immune to holy water and Hellfire, though you might have gathered that already. This immunity extends to holy objects and cursed objects alike. Crowley, please don’t test this; Aziraphale’s nerves will catch fire. Nevertheless, you have this gift, so use it wisely. Humanity is still so young. You should be there to help them grow.
> 
> I hope this letter brings you some peace after the stunt you pulled with your bosses. You should have seen Gabriel’s face.
> 
> All my love,
> 
> Mother

They stared at it together for a long while. Aziraphale read and reread the letter, memorizing it. Crowley cried silently.

“We’re safe,” Aziraphale finally murmured, setting down the letter. “You’re safe.”

Crowley wrapped his arms around him, burying his face in the coat.

“I don’t – forgive Her,” he choked out. “I don’t – I –”

“I know, my dear,” Aziraphale soothed. They swayed gently together amidst the mess of boxes and loose objects.

“She says she loves me,” Crowley whispered, almost too quiet to hear. “But I can’t feel it. I can’t.”

“Oh, my love. It’s okay. Let’s get you to bed.”

They picked their way through the boxes to their bedroom. Crowley let himself fall to the bed, exhausted by the emotional rollercoaster the day had been.

“D’you know what,” he said, once the lights were out. “I don’t even want to feel it.”

“Oh?”

“Her love,” he clarified. “I don’t want it.”

“I can imagine.”

“I don’t need it.”

“Of course.”

“I’ve got you.”

“Yes.” He pulled Crowley closer and held him tighter. “I’ve got you, too.”

* * *

1\. Crowley took the liberty of rearranging all the arrows on the floor. Also, he conjured bite marks into all the fake fruit. Some habits died hard. [ ▲ ]


End file.
